Her hand stills, then shifts, her palm settling more fully against my face, grounding instead of testing.
“That’s because you walked in already halfway there,” she replies.
I let my eyes close for a second.
Just a second.
The contact is…steady. Not distracting. Not pulling me away from anything. It holds me in place instead, gives the noise somewhere to settle that isn’t just inside my own head.
“You’re not supposed to be the one fixing this,” I say, my voice lower now.
“I’m not fixing it,” she replies. “I’m stopping you from making it worse.”
That pulls a breath out of me that feels different than the others.
Less sharp.
More…real.
I open my eyes again, and she’s still there, still watching me like she’s not going anywhere whether I want her to or not.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she says.
I hesitate.
Not because I don’t know.
Because saying it makes it?—
Real.
“He’s right,” I say finally. “About the control.”
Her expression doesn’t change.
“Yeah,” she says.
I let out a short, quiet breath.
“I don’t control it the way I thought I did,” I continue, the words coming slower now, measured instead of forced. “I react. I adjust. But I don’t?—”
“Direct it,” she finishes for me.
I nod once.
She studies me for a moment, then shifts closer again, her hand sliding from my jaw to the back of my neck, her fingers threading lightly into my hair, not pulling, just holding.
“Then stop trying to overpower it,” she says, her voice low, steady against the space between us. “You don’t need more force. You need control.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” she asks, her thumb brushing slowly along the edge of my neck, the movement grounding in a way I didn’t expect. “Because what I saw out there—and what you just described—doesn’t sound like someone who knows it.”
I let out a quiet breath, something between a laugh and frustration.
“You’re not wrong.”
“I know,” she says, and there’s the faintest hint of a smile in it.
